Tips to Make Family Vacations Affordable and Fun
Or How to Stay Sane During a 12-Hour Drive While Stuck In the Car with 3 Children

07/18/2013

Cooking at the Beach

We had access to a beautiful semi-private beach where we stayed. It was on the northern side of the island in Darnley. The beach stretched for miles and miles in both directions and only the homes in the immediate vicinity had access to this beach.

Because you had to walk down the steep red dirt dunes, too, when you were on the beach you saw very few homes and very few people.

In fact, it wasn’t unusual to have only a handful of families in our immediate area of the beach. And sometimes it was even less.There were times where we’d be the only family on our stretch of the beach. It was like our own little slice of heaven.

We’d often come down and spend a couple of hours on the beach, whether it was swimming or walking along the beach or searching for the biggest sea shell or flying kites or playing bocce ball. It was a truly relaxing time for all of us and we heard very little bickering!

One night, we decided to pack the cooler and some beach blankets and have ourselves a beach cookout. We carted everything down to the beach and set up a little fire ring in the sand (which actually wasn’t that hard as there was the remains of one that we found).

Our little fire ring was in a nice shady spot near the dunes, which helped protect the fire from being blown out by any winds. My Chandler also enjoyed the fact that he could use some flatter spots on the cliff side of the dunes as work space.

We did discover a disadvantage to this little set up, though, as the sun started to go down. It grew a lot colder!

For My Chandler, the cook of the family, cooking over an open fire on the beach was an activity he was more than happy to take on. All of his camping and boy scout experiences and knowledge was put to good use. There were a few challenges along the way - like the hamburgers that he cooked in the camp broiler that were awkward to handle until he found a way to prop it up. But, the end result was that we were treated to a wonderful beachside meal of hotdogs and hamburgers and cooked potatoes and carrots.

My Chandler was particularly pleased with the way the potatoes came out. He ended up using two sandstone rocks from the fire ring and placing them on either side of a section of coals. He then laid the grate from the gas grill on those and placed a foil-wrapped package of potatoes and carrots on that. The result – perfectly cooked side dish! Although, part of that may be the fact that we were having more yummy PEI potatoes, a delicacy that I’ll talk more about tomorrow!

We wrapped up our beach meal with the must-have dessert for all campfires – s’mores! And as we enjoyed those, we also enjoyed the wonderful sunset. A perfect way to end another perfect day at PEI!